


Kneeling on the Heights of Virtue

by Carmarthen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Bathing/Washing, Cold, Foot Massage, Guilt, Guilty Pleasures, Kneeling, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme fill for: "Valjean washing Javert's feet. Pile the Jesus allusions high!" </p><p>Standard post-Seine AU set-up. Sorry it's all UST and probably not enough Jesus allusions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kneeling on the Heights of Virtue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Kneeling on the Heights of Virtue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1838560) by [alucard1771](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alucard1771/pseuds/alucard1771)



> Does anyone even still read fills for ancient kinkmeme prompts?

By the time he reached Valjean's apartment in the rue de l'Homme Armé, Javert's boots were soaked through with the frigid slurry of rainwater and muck half-flooding the streets. A more pious man given to exaggeration might have called it a rainstorm of biblical proportions, and wondered what fresh sins Paris had committed to draw it down; Javert was merely grateful for the decreased crime rate, if not for the increased loss of feeling in his feet.

Valjean opened the door in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat unbuttoned and cravat untied, the lamplight behind him lighting his white hair to soft gold. "Javert!" he said, reaching out at once to draw him inside, heedless of the frigid water dripping from Javert's coat. "I did not expect you to come, not in this."

Javert stood stiffly, dripping muddy water on Valjean's worn carpet and wishing he had stayed home. He had thought it a greater breach of courtesy not to come when he was expected, but now he felt himself an imposition in Valjean's spartan little home, which all the same felt warmer than Javert's own apartment. There was a slightly wilting arrangement of flowers on a side table, no doubt brought by the girl, and he averted his eyes from it. "I shouldn't have come," he said, more curtly than he meant. "My apologies; you are already making ready to retire."

"Only with some tea and a book," Valjean said, wrestling Javert's sodden greatcoat off over his half-hearted protests; he was too cold to properly resist, and now that the warmth of the flat had begun to seep into his flesh his hands burned and twinged with the returning rush of blood. "The portress has already gone to sleep, I am afraid, but I assure you I am capable of producing tea—by God, Javert, your hands are frozen!" This last was said as he wrapped Javert's hands in his, the sudden heat near enough to painful that Javert had to bite back a gasp. "Come dry off in the kitchen."

With alarming speed, Javert found himself guided gently but irrevocably into the small kitchen and deposited into a hard chair close enough to the stove that his damp shirt began to steam as he shivered. The warmth was dangerously pleasant; with each passing moment he found himself wishing less and less to leave again.

He was jolted from his reverie by the sensation of Valjean easing his boots off, and looked down to find--unconscionable sight!--the good man kneeling in his shirtsleeves on the kitchen floor, venerable white head bent, his broad laborer's hands now rolling Javert's wet stockings off. 

"What the devil are you doing?" Javert snapped, the anger catching him unwary; he had thought to have finally reconciled Valjean in his mind, but now this—

"Your feet must be cold," Valjean said, rising with the ease of a much younger man—that was good, better than how he had moved in those first months after the barricades—Javert found his irritation slipping away from him and grasped for it again, with a desperation he did not care to contemplate. "You must not warm them too quickly,” Valjean continued. “Cosette used to grow so cold when she insisted on playing in the garden in winter, no matter how I bundled her up. She would come inside and sit too close to the fire and cry until her hands stopped hurting; she did not have the patience to warm herself slowly."

Valjean clattered around in a cupboard for a moment, extracting a basin, which he filled with water from a pitcher. "It's best to start with cool water," he said, kneeling again and encouraging Javert to place his feet in the basin.

It was, Javert had to admit, less excruciating than warm water would have been, although still unpleasant. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to think of the prickling tingle of blood returning to his feet, and not of Valjean's hands, gentle and sure, washing away the mud that had seeped through Javert's stockings. But he did not have to look to imagine him, his hair like a halo, face as serene as a painting of the Magdalene washing Christ’s feet. The blasphemy discomfited him. But neither was Javert a truly pious man, a disciple to be knelt to in service by a man he still privately thought of as something akin to a saint.

"How do they feel?" Valjean asked after a moment.

"Better," Javert said, not trusting his voice to more polite utterance. It was better; the sensation had returned, but slowly, bearably, and his shivering had begun to abate in the heat from the stove. That only meant he had less to distract him from Valjean’s assured motions, how very much at home he seemed.

Valjean rose again, this time to empty the basin into the bucket by the door. His shirtsleeves were soaked to the elbow, and he shoved them up with some impatience, exposing forearms still well-muscled and sinewy; but it was the raised white bands of scarred flesh around his wrists that drew Javert's gaze and made his gut twist.

Their eyes met. Valjean glanced down at his own wrists, his face impassive, and Javert looked away again. God, he should not have come tonight; he was a fool. There was too much unspoken between them. Too much, perhaps, that could never be spoken.

A plume of steam had begun to rise from the kettle, the sound of the water boiling loud in the close, muggy air.

This time the water was warm, not too hot, a blessed relief that made Javert sigh and close his eyes again. If it pleased Valjean to fuss over him, he would endure it.

He winced, hissing through his teeth as Valjean took one foot in both hands, thumbs digging firmly into the arch in a way that made Javert shift in the chair, uncertain whether to be pained. No, if anything, it ought to be him kneeling before Valjean, him _atoning_ —

"Valjean—" he began, meaning to object, but Valjean's hands were strong and warm, the water a pleasant caress against his skin, and as Valjean's fingers dug into a particularly sore part of his foot, he found his words stolen by a helpless sound dragged rusty and reluctant from his throat.

Valjean’s hands stilled for a moment, so brief as to be almost imperceptible, before continuing to work in firm, smooth strokes, finding tension Javert had not realized he bore. He felt almost paralyzed—hypnotized, perhaps—by the repetitive nature of it, by the sensation so perfectly balanced between agony and comfort, but most of all by the curious expression of peace on Valjean’s face. He wanted to close his eyes again. It was wrong for Valjean to find peace in this; it was wrong for Javert to find pleasure in it; it was wrong—

“Am I hurting you?” Valjean’s voice was quiet, scarcely louder than the crackle of the stove. He had stopped moving, his hands merely cradling Javert’s foot, thumbs resting against the instep.

Javert’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his throat unbearably dry. Valjean was very close, close enough that Javert could have reached out and steadied himself with a hand on his shoulder, close enough to see the roll and flex of muscle under his clothing, the shadowed hollow of his throat where his collar gaped open.

He shook his head, this time not trusting his voice at all.

The water had cooled by the time Valjean finished with his other foot, fingers lingering almost ticklish against his ankle, but Javert felt entirely too warm now, his trousers pulled uncomfortably tight. He was half-convinced that his face was flushed with fever. Perhaps he was ill; perhaps he had caught cold in the downpour. Surely that was all this unfamiliar ache was, an inconvenient fever-trick and nothing more. He dared not move, dared not shift even an inch lest Valjean see.

“I am afraid my knees will not permit me further,” Valjean said, splattering drops of water from the basin across the kitchen floor as he stood with a faint wince, “but you are warm now, surely.”

Javert did not want to look. He wanted his body to obey him, and he wanted to make some excuse to leave, any excuse, a forgotten fire left lit that should have been banked lest it burn down his building, an urgent report for the Prefecture, anyway. But his policeman’s eyes were drawn to Valjean’s sturdy figure as iron to a lodestone, and he noted the tremble in Valjean’s hands as he emptied the basin and returned it to the cupboard, the over-careful way he poured the tea, the faint flush over his cheekbones that might only have been from the heat of the stove.

And he noticed, as Valjean handed him the cup of tea with an open gaze and hands that were steady again, something that might only have been a shadow, an accidental fold of his trousers creating the illusion of arousal—save for the instinct that told him it was more than a mere trick of the light.

Somehow, before even realizing his own sin, he had dragged Valjean down with him.

**Author's Note:**

> I gave Valjean the wrist-shackle scars from the movie for Bonus Awkwardness but I mostly had book canon in mind.
> 
> It's vaguely theoretically possible I might someday carry this setup through to resolved sexual tension, but unlikely.


End file.
